A Zimbabwean magistrate’s court on Wednesday placed four directors of the independent newspaper The Daily News on remand, quashing a defence bid to have the charges against them dropped.
The four are facing charges of contempt of court and publishing the newspaper, a harsh critic of the government of President Robert Mugabe, without a licence.
Magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe ordered them each to pay bail of Z$50 000 Zimbabwe dollars (R435) and return to court on November 13.
The magistrate placed them on remand to allow himself time to study a ruling on a similar matter involving another of the paper’s directors, who was freed by the High Court in Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo, on Monday.
Defence lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa had pointed to the Bulawayo court’s finding that no grounds existed to place Washington Sansole, who had been arrested on Saturday, on remand.
Mtetwa said the facts surrounding Sansole’s case were similar, and argued against applying the law selectively for the others.
”It will clearly be discriminatory. The Constitution provides against selective application of the law,” Mtetwa said.
The four — Samuel Nkomo, Rachel Kupara, Brian Mutsau and Sturat Mattinson — were locked up in police cells for two days and two nights.
”Clearly the intention is to lock up the accused not because they committed any offence but [because] someone has to be punished,” Mtetwa said.
”There is nothing that justifies the accused having been placed in custody for two nights,” she said.
Elizabeth Mwatse-Simowah argued on behalf of the state that the four acted in contempt when they proceeded to publish Saturday against a Supreme Court ruling that they should get registered first.
The charges follow the short-lived return to the newsstands on Saturday of The Daily News, six weeks after it was shut down by the authorities.
The reappearance of the popular newspaper followed a court ruling on Friday that a state-appointed media commission had wrongly denied the paper a licence when it applied for one in September.
It ordered the paper to be licensed by November 30. — Sapa-AFP